Russia has an extraordinarily rich cultural tradition, including:
Artists
Chagall, Vrubel, Malevich, Kandinsky
Composers
Tchaikovksy, Mussorgsky, Skriabin, Rachmaninov, Prokofiev, Shostakovich
Filmmakers
Eisenstein, Dovzhenko, Paradzhanov, Tarkovsky, Muratova, Sokurov, Zviagintsev
Dancers and Choreographers
Nijinsky, Plisetskaya, Nuriev, Baryshnikov
Writers
Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Babel, Zamyatin, Bulgakov, Nabokov, Solzhenitsyn, Tolstaya
Poets
Pushkin, Lermontov, Tiutchev, Blok, Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Tsvetaeva, Pasternak, Mayakovsky, Khlebnikov, Brodsky and others, whose works can only be truly appreciated in Russian.
Did we mention hockey... figure skating... tennis...